Category: Articles (Page 137 of 258)

Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.

Tips For Generating Blog Post Ideas

January 15, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Recently, Chris Lema published a blog post titled Have You Run Out of Blog Post Ideas? And if you haven’t read it, then I highly recommend it. (In fact, if you’re involved in WordPress, I highly recommend you subscribe to his blog.)

Running Out of Blog Post Ideas?

In the post, he shares some practical tips for how he comes up with ideas for blog posts. If you’re someone who’s looking to blog more regularly but aren’t sure how to do it, then the post gives you some great advice for how to help capture ideas and turn them into posts.

Since I try to blog daily and I try to make sure what I have to say isn’t something that’s meant to fill some type of weekly quota, I thought I’d follow suit and share how I go about coming up with ideas for posts and then turning them into actual posts.

Our Critics and WordPress and The Silver Screen

January 14, 2016 / Tom

As much as I love movies (and I’d venture to say that few people don’t), I rarely talk about them on this blog. I mean, there’s very little overlap between whatever it is we experience in the theater or via Netflix that crosses lines into what we, as those involved WordPress, do for a living.

Sure, I mean there are plenty of TV shows and movies that try to show some type of computing or programming angle – probably now more than ever – but it’s rarely worth mentioning unless you’re simply writing to make fun of it.

But good movies, you know, those that make you feel something or that connect with you on a level that doesn’t happen often can end up creating some type of connection between what you’ve seen on the screen and what you do for a living.

So for a moment, let’s pretend there’s some type of connection that can be made between our critics and WordPress and the movies that we watch.

WordPress and Data Ownership, Social Networks and Privacy

January 12, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

I try to be pretty open-minded about most things. That is, I try not to be legalistic or dogmatic about any particular idea. If something comes along that contradicts something I hold true or near and dear, I’m willing to evaluate the evidence and see if it reinforces or challenges what I believe.

Admittedly, there are people who are better at it than I am but I do my best.

But one thing I absolutely cannot get passed – and this is something becoming more and more prevalent the older I get and the more I work in software, specifically in open source – is the idea of data ownership.

And I believe there’s a direct result between what we’re able to do with WordPress and data ownership that can positively impact the type of solutions we release and we’ve yet to even realize we can build.

Should WordPress Product Support Be In-House?

January 8, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

When asked if product support is done in-house by the company who built the product, the easy answer appears to be yes, doesn’t it? I mean, why would you have it any other way?

More specifically, why would you have someone who doesn’t work for your company handle support for something you (or you and your team) built?

Sure, there are loopholes – a phrase I use loosely in this post – for this like hiring someone to work for your company who can be a dedicated resource to handling support of the product when they aren’t as familiar with the product.

But when that happens, I think the lack of experience shows when you start to get into slightly more complicated issues.

The Advantages of Creating an Interface

January 7, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

In web development, I think many who here the term “interface” or who talk about “creating an interface” usually refer to how the page, site, or graphics will look.

And that’s completely normal because when the majority of outlets – presentations, news, articles, media, etc. – talk about the way something looks as it relates to technology, they always talk about its interface.

Not to mention, it is the correct term.

But when it comes to object-oriented programming, the idea of creating an interface is a bit different. Rather than referring to the way a program looks, you could say that it has more to do with how it functions.

Even that isn’t necessarily the proper definition, but it’s close enough. If you’re an experienced programmer, then you’re likely already familiar with this idea.

But if you’re someone who’s just getting into object-oriented programming (specifically using PHP in the context of WordPress), then maybe this will help when designing the architecture of your next project.